Transformer-like robots battle alien water lizards

Rating: 7/10 (15 July 2013)

This fairly entertaining movie is all about enormous alien water-lizard monsters fighting enormous Transformer-like robots. Sometimes they fight in or over the ocean; sometimes they fight in cities. When they fight in cities, the cities get spectacularly trashed.
The plot revolves around the efforts of the international military/scientific force that operates the robots, and there are several side stories relating to that.
As you can imagine, most of the movie is based on special effects, which are sometimes quite beautiful and spectacular. It's a modern action movie in every sense of the word. This movie will appeal particularly to those who crave sensational, loud, fast and smash-filled action. It's essentially a video-game movie.
I thought the flashback scenes involving Mako were iconic and almost moving. This was the only time I was close to being moved during the film (rather than just sensationally titillated).
They picked a beautiful man to play the lead role (Charlie Hunnam), and had him play a few scenes shirtless. Not quite sure what demographic they were going for there, but it certainly worked for me. The camera loves this guy.
I had a few issues with certain aspects of the movie. The robot force was a strange mix of quasi-military people, scientists and martial artists. The phony, cliché and unnecessary militaristic dialogue bothered me. This was not really a military force at all, but yet they gave the characters lines like "permission to be dismissed, sir". Like most American movies, this movie is filled with groups yelling "yes sir", something you usually only see in basic training in the real military. These movies also unrealistically turn pilots and generals into infantry soldiers at the blink of an eye.
(A lot of movie makers nowadays have a strange notion of the military. They make it look like it is always a ragtag affair, with insubordinate behaviour and ill-disciplined mavericks playing a major role; however, at the same time they love the trappings of the military, especially the dialogue and ritualised social interactions. There are two lines in particular that indicate cliché cinematic writing: "permission to speak freely sir" and "permission to approach the bench your honour".)
The cliché portrayal of the scientists also rankled. It bordered on caricature.
I didn't buy the relationship between Stacker and Mako at all. Stacker's dialogue was ridiculous at times. The character was ridiculous, although I suppose it was ably played. It made no sense that the leader of the force fighting to save the planet would get into the tank, so to speak, to fight the battle personally. But hey that's a problem in most movies now. Even presidents are expected to be able to fight in modern American movies.
When did American movies stop even the pretense of showing things realistically?
Once again, it bothered me that the world's youth -- most of whom are grossly unfit internet and gaming addicts -- are being entertained by portrayals of people who are the exact opposite: superfit military types who are experts in martial arts. Why is it that the people who enjoy movies like this are precisely not the types who go to the gym, enjoy fighting, train for hours, or join the military. No, they watch movies showing people who do these things. Does that bother you too? We live in a world where movie makers orient their products around soft gamers living out their fantasies vicariously. The problem is that the rest of us get caught up in this dynamic.
This is not really a movie for adults, but it is a good example of its genre. If you like movies like this, I'm sure you'll like this one. It's not a movie for adults who worry about things like insurance rates, death tolls and marine environments, or who like to be moved by characters they care about.